Rabu, Desember 28, 2011

His score is fun and sometimes funny, but there’s actually a strong dramatic undercurrent through it all, the composer deftly reflecting the difficult relationship the audience needs to have with Murray’s character, hating him but at the same time believing that he could ultimately be turned around.

While the score is a little bit too bitty (it runs for about 33 minutes, made up of 21 tracks, many of those combined from even shorter ones) to be entirely satisfying on album, this new release is still an entertaining one, filling an important gap in the Elfman discography.Rating-nya tiga setengah bintang, baca lengkapnya di sini. Berikutnya dari Filmtracks, ini kutipannya:

Buy it... if you seek the origination point for many of the holiday and suspense techniques explored with far greater notoriety by Danny Elfman in Batman Returns and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Avoid it... if you have long awaited an official release of this very short score and expect to hear more original music that compares favorably to the five minutes of outstanding, previously released highlights for full orchestra and choir.

While it's great to appreciate the score's lesser known portions on the limited 2011 product, it is difficult to recommend that album to an audience outside of Elfman's most supportive fanbase. There is definitely a sentimental place for this score, but be aware of the brevity of its highlights and full length. Rating-nya tiga bintang, baca lengkapnya di sini. Trakhir dari Film Music Magazine, berikut kutipannya:

among the soundtracks that have directly dealt with the holiday like “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman Returns” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Family Man,” “Scrooged” just might take the gonzo antlers.

Sabtu, Desember 24, 2011

Scrooged would pose a challenge that Elfman had not previously faced. Most of the composer's collaborators up to this point had been younger, more experimental filmmakers for whom Efman had been more or less a peer. Richard Donner was a long-established director, comfortable with studio politics and experienced at working with composers. His prior musical collaborators included Jerry Goldsmith (whose score for Donner’s The Omen on an Academy Award) and John Williams (Superman). Donner had considered approaching Williams for Scrooged and needed to be convinced to use the up-and-coming Elfman.

Elfman’s agent, Richard Kraft made a cassette tape of cues from Beetlejuice, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and even Elfman’s early Forbidden Zone music for Donner: “Richard Donner finally spoke to me about it and I had my day in court to explain why Danny was so great. I eventually got them together and he was sold.”

Finding the proper musical tone on Scrooged would have presented a challenge for even the most experienced composer. The main character had to be seen as heartless, cruel, miserly, tasteless—but redeemable and likable. Earlier takes on the Dickens story all trafficked in macabre visions of ghosts, poverty and heartlessness, but Scrooged employed state-of-the-art makeup and visual effects to convey its horrors, and Donner had to up the ante to convey the shock of Frank Cross’s ultimate redemption to contemporary audiences. But Scrooged was still a comedy, and holiday comedy at that—for all its dark visions of frozen bums, dusty corpses and a man being burned alive, the movie needed to make audiences laugh and ultimately feel good about themselves.

Elfman’s main title immediately impressed Richard Donner. “I remember being on the recording stage on the first cue and all of us looking at each other and thinking, ‘Oh my God, he hit it.’ It was like hearing John Williams doing Superman and Goldsmith doing The Omen. I’ve really been fortunate in the composers I’ve worked with. Danny had a great sense of humor, and he was brilliantly not full of himself when he very well could have been. He was extremely flexible and a delight to work with.”

Donner says that hearing a composer’s original music for the first time can be daunting. “I don’t impose myself on people except just to give my thoughts—I think Danny was quite honestly ahead of us most of the time. But you hear the score in your head and also you do a temp score of ‘what’s the kind of feeling we want and what are you going to do?” and one of the dangers is you fall in love with the temp score. When the composer comes in, it’s difficult because you have a preconceived notion of what the score will be. Sometimes you hear something from the composer that’s so different that you either jump for joy and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” or you try to steer them back to what the temp score sounded like. If I did have moments like that he was extremely cooperative and creative, and if I didn’t, he was way ahead of us.”

Donner’s desire for a “non-comedy” score had been fulfilled. “When you listen to the music from Scrooged,” the director says, “it had incredible overtones and if you just said it was a comedy score, it would be a big mistake—it was a brilliant score and it fit each and every scene and the emotions you were trying to get across, but it wasn’t a comedy score. Comedy scores—especially today—are overly huge and they’re used to punch up a joke or a bad line, but if you really listen to that score, it’s much more than a comedy score. It hits the emotions of Bill Murray’s character. I think Danny is so incredibly versatile—he’s a bit of a genius and he’s obviously proved it over the years.”

Who’d have thought that Danny Elfman would do one of his most inspired movie scores for a movie that didn’t really exist- let alone several at the same time? It’s this inventive, stylistic bounty that’s made me give a deserved mulligan to the Elfman soundtracks that you can only see live on stage at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood- home to Cirque Du Soleil’s movies-as-a-circus show “Iris.” With the music sending Cirque’s death-defying performers over audiences’ heads, trampolining off buildings, and contorting themselves into pretzels, Elfman’s work gives new meaning to being “in synch” with these moving human pictures. Ranging from furiously percussive symphonies to music box bells, solo pianos, syncopated voices and swing jazz, “Iris” not only traverses the amazing history of Elfman music with sections reminiscent of “Edward Scissorhands,” “Nightbreed” and “Dick Tracy,” but that of Hollywood scoring itself, with Elfman doing his own spins of “West Side Story”’s finger-snapping jazz to the raging dance ritual of “King Kong.” At once tightly controlled and spur-of-the-second, “Iris” brings out a new sense of invention and freedom from a composer who’s already one of Hollywood’s most inventive performers. “Iris” is a musical high wire act that Elfman pulls off with tremendous energy, and one definitely worth seeing in person.

Produced by Dan GoldwasserMastered by Mike MatessinoLiner Notes by Jeff BondArt Direction by Dan Goldwasser

An important score in Elfman’s cannon, SCROOGED was the composer’s first big-budget Hollywood score – and one that clearly anticipates his next, and most iconic work, BATMAN. For this wickedly funny and inventive update of the immortal Dickens Christmas classic, Elfman fashions a robust, sophisticated musical tapestry that expertly weaves together the film’s varied tones, which runs the gambit from wildly broad comedy and holiday cheer to gothic horror and emotional drama. Produced by Dan Goldwasser and mastered by Mike Matessino, this special release features bonus tracks, source cues and exclusive liner notes from film music writer Jeff Bond, with new comments from Director Richard Donner and others.

Why Should you buy it?: Don’t expect Elfman’s enraged approach to “Hellboy 2” here, let alone “The Incredible Hulk,” as the composer envisions these behemoths with NASCAR-ready country-western-rock. And that turns out to be just the right, inspired choice for a dad driving his ‘bot from one American rust bowl to the other. While “Steel” starts off with raw, strumming simplicity, Elfman gradually brings in his more recognizable strings lines, heavenly choirs (with a particularly angelic voice provided by Poe) and fighting mad orchestra, with thumping, metal grunge leading to the big moment in the robot ring.

Some time goes by and Tim comes with Batman. That was considerably a different goal because it was my first and his first big budget film and we were no longer like kids left on their own who could do whatever they want. Nobody cared what we did for Pee-Wee or Beetlejuice but people who invested money, the Studio, did care about Batman. That was when I really learned what film scoring is actually about, the politics, the psychology, the personalities, the difficulty and that it’s not just fun. This was a long difficult road and really the beginning of what was, I feel, my education for film’s scoring.

That was the beginning of a whole different thing because now I’ve got to see Tim really stressed and I got to feel what real stress was about. It’s hard to believe that it was 20 years ago but I believe that’s when my scoring education began, withBatman. That’s when I thought ‘Maybe I like this job and I want to stick with it, take it a little bit more seriously.’ That triggered two decades now. And let’s skip around a bit.

Daughter-in-law Jenna Elfman will do a surrealistic aerial dance routine (did you know Jenna’s a professional dancer?); I’ll get brother Danny to reprise his Devil role, singing a knockout version of “St. James Infirmary Blues,” and we’ll shoot the “Crenshaw” scenes in Ghana.

Senin, November 14, 2011

Ever want to listen to something that is just pure inspiration? Something that is as far away from pretentious scoring as you can get? Well, Real Steel may be for you then. That's what this score is. It's a down to earth story that we've all heard or seen before in some fashion, but that doesn't mean it isn't good. The simple instrumentation makes it feel like a romcom score, but Elfman executes it with such precision that you can't help exposing your heart strings for some tugging. Then we get into the action music. Elfman mixes in strings with some hard electronics to give the score its robotic aggression. The score is all about overcoming the odds and it's an underdog story. So you should go in expecting everything your initial expectations were. The score is good at delivering those great "we did it!" moments, and it gave me some heartwarming chills now and then. I enjoyed it, which is something because I haven't been enjoying non-Burton Danny Elfman lately that much.

Elfman is a professional, so everything here is technically proficient, some of the tunes are fun, but it doesn’t go beyond what any reasonably-competent film composer might have written – there’s no personality here, only occasional hints that it was actually the work of a composer whose very strong musical personality is actually one of the strongest reasons he’s been so successful and remains so popular. It’s enjoyable fluff, for sure, but fluff nonetheless.

Kamis, Oktober 27, 2011

Audiences everywhere will soon be able to hear Mike Shinoda's score for Indonesian action epic The Raid. It comes from the same place that Linkin Park brews their daring and diverse distillation of genres, but it also shows another side of Shinoda. He's always infused a distinctly cinematic aesthetic into Linkin Park's music—especially on songs like "Iridescent" and "When They Come For Me"—however, for The Raid, he expands upon that sentiment as far as possible.

So in terms of film music, who are some of Mike Shinoda's favorite composers?

"A lot of mainstream stuff, really," Shinoda says with a smile. "I like Hans Zimmer and John Williams. I also really like Danny Elfman because his style is so distinctive and I grew up listening to Oingo Boingo."

The music for Real Steel isn't your typical "rah rah root for the underdog" score. It's a score with a soul and full of infectious melodies. The music sounds a bit of the style that Elfman had really started to adapt to in the late 90's starting with his score for the Academy Award winning film, Good Will Hunting and continuing through underrated works such as A Simple Plan, A Civil Action, Anywhere But Here and Instinct. Those scores were a different side of the composer that most rarely saw and really began with his brilliant and amazing score to 1993 Civil War drama "Sommersby" which really surprised alot of people and then began to offer him more dramatic projects. The music of Real Steel is everything you would want for a film like this, excitement, drama, suspense and a lot of feel good inspirational moments.

It's terrific release at it's running time that definitely doesn't wear you out and is enjoyable in everyway. The album is a winner and easily one of the more enjoyable scores of the year.

Real Steel is one of Elfman's more accessible and enjoyable scores in a while and it's great to see him back to his 1990's style for a change. Well done.

"We had this discussion with Batman," said Elfman, "[about] whether we wanted to incorporate the TV theme. And Tim said, ‘No, don't do that.' And on Planet of the Apes, once again, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; that was a big one – "Do we incorporate it in?" "No." So I'm just guessing that he's gonna say no again, that he's gonna want to develop his own language and dialogue for this."

"Having said that," Elfman laughed, "who knows? You may just hear a theramin!"

Sabtu, Oktober 22, 2011

Buy it... if you've always admired Danny Elfman's wholesome contemporary tones in Anywhere But Here and The Family Man and desire that sound expanded with a full orchestral ensemble for a heroic sports genre triumph.

Avoid it... if you're turned off by the prospect of hearing Elfman revise Bill Conti's Rocky formula into the futuristic world of bad-ass mechanized fighting, complete with thumping rock percussion and prominent electric guitars.

In the end, Real Steel is a score with uniquely packaged character, smart thematic loyalty, and one hell of a narrative conclusion, and any other composer attempting to match its quality in a possible sequel will face a potentially impossible challenge. *****Baca lengkapnya di sini.

From the live Cirque du Soleil® show, IRIS – A Journey Through the World of Cinema™, performing exclusively at Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, comes its studio soundtrack by multiple OSCAR® nominated composer Danny Elfman.

Best known for scoring music for television and movies (The Simpsons and Desperate Housewives and many of Tim Burton’s films including Alice in Wonderland) and having earned numerous honors, Elfman joins Cirque du Soleil for the first time to compose and produce the music of a poetic phantasmagoria inspired by the world of cinema.

The unique blend of 100 orchestral musicians – the largest number in Cirque du Soleil recording history – spread over large and small ensembles are mixed with the live show’s eight house musicians working with and around each other, are now brought together on this 17-song album.

Supporting the show’s kaleidoscope of movement, moods and images, Danny Elfman evokes the language of film music, magnifying the emotions of this surrealistic tribute of the seventh art, cinema.

Danny Elfman, the former leader of rock band Oingo Boingo and one of Hollywood's most prolific soundtrack composers, said he was given considerable artistic leeway in composing his atmospheric, genre-bending score for "Iris" — a practice that's rare in the committee-driven contemporary Hollywood studio system, he noted.

"There's not, like, Cirque people watching over us constantly, like, 'Don't do that, change this, don't do this,'" Elfman said. "They know that their best work comes out of allowing artists to be artists."

Cirque's open-minded attitude, Elfman believes, emanates from Laliberté. "Guy doesn't come in and micro-manage like some producers can," he said. The Cirque chief's management style, according to Elfman, is to step in with essential feedback at crucial intervals but otherwise stay out of the way.

"In a cinema reference, it would be like working with Louis B. Mayer in the '40s," Elfman said. "And so we're making the movie, and at a certain point Louis B. Mayer is going to walk in, and he's going to see the screening and he's going to go, 'Cut that scene, that scene, that scene's gotta go, and you've got to take 30 minutes out. Bye!'"

“I called up Crystal Method, I’m like, ‘Come to my editing room,’ I showed them the fight scenes and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah we got this, we got this,’ and then they were like ‘Can we see more?’ and so I showed them some of the more underdog kind of rousing emotional scenes, and they were like ‘Why are we fucking getting emotional at a fucking robot movie?’…But anyway they wrote two different songs, one is the introduction to Noisy Boy who is our kind of Japanese Bot, that’s a song called ‘Bring the Noise’ that is great…and then, this was fascinating, they wrote a piece of music for Round 1 of Zeus vs. Atom, which is the climactic fight, and it worked pretty well, as a track it worked great. But we mix it on the movie, and I’m like ‘Shit, all of Crystal Method’s sounds are in exactly the same pitch as the robot sound effects,’ so the result was you couldn’t hear it. So then what happened is Crystal Method basically did a kind of collaboration with Danny Elfman, who wrote an overlay on top of the Crystal Method track, so what’s in the movie is this weird unexpected Danny Elfman/Crystal Method duet that works exceptionally well.”

Rabu, September 28, 2011

The music will be a combination of an eight-piece ensemble performing live and the sound of an 80-piece orchestra Elfman will record in two weeks. "The language of cinema is orchestral so there's no way to leave that out," he says, noting that sounds come from the full force of the band or be a single instrument.

Elfman, known for his scores of Tim Burton films, "Milk" and the "Spider-man" films, began work on the project 2-1/2 years ago, simply writing music to hand to Decoufle. There were no drawings or clips, just conversations about what was needed. Once they had performances pieces ready, Elfman would cut and paste some music and return to his studio to compose some ore.

"Then I disappear and they would come back saying they have a dozen things working so I would take a two minute piece and have to turn it into 6-1/2 minutes," he says of the process. "They would show up with three pieces that have no music. Some times you start from scratch, in others you tie one piece to another.

“I did a ballet for Twyla Tharp. At first, I thought this was almost more like doing a ballet than doing a film. Yet many of the influences were film. So it was really like a hybrid of doing the ballet for Twyla and doing the films that I usually do. The process of it was much closer to the ballet, but much more intense.”

With the ballet, he only required the choreographer’s approval. Film, too, only requires collaboration with the director, he said. Within the Cirque, Elfman found he had to cater to the needs of each performer. (There are 75.)

“Every piece had to suit a very, very different temperament and style, and it was all about performance. Fortunately, I’m kind of used to rolling with the punches, and having to be a musical acrobat. That served me well.”

DS: Iris is going to be at the Kodak for a very long time. How do you see the music and the show developing through the years?

DE: I really have no way of anticipating that. I’m told, in the normal Cirque world, that it’s when things settle after the opening that they start to develop one or two alternating acts. That means, if somebody gets injured, they have to have some act to put in that person’s place. Iris has no alternates right now. Already in the last two months, there’ve been acts that have been down for three or four days at a time. But as they come up with replacements, I imagine I’ll have to score them. So I see Iris as a constantly moving thing -- an entire show that depends on the fragility of human tendons and ligaments. I have no doubt I’ll be called in again and again to make adjustments, changes, or to write new music for some new piece that will be going in.

DS: Even though it’s not a movie, Iris is very much about the images in movies that we instantly recall through music. In that respect, what do you think Iris has to say about the importance of music in the movies?

DE: I don’t know if Iris is saying anything important about music in film. I think the show’s music just speaks for itself. While it has nods to movies like West Side Story and King Kong, there are also moments that are just from my own imagination -- one that’s filled with film music. So I figured that, without even trying, Iris’s music would sound cinematic, whether I want it to or not. That’s just because it’s the way I’m wired.

DS: What’s one of the things that stands out for you about the whole experience of Iris?

DE: I didn’t think it would take me this long to say that one of my greatest moments was rushing into a rehearsal one night, I was late, and I’m driving down to the parking lot where they had special areas for the Iris customers. The guard was saying “Are you here for the circus?” I flashed my badge and said, “I’m in the circus!” As I was running upstairs, I asked myself if I really just said that. And wow, I did. I screamed, “I’m in the circus!” furiously to some parking lot attendant. It took me this long to be able to say that, and I didn’t expect that to happen at this point in my life.

Engel got her start in the biz as tour manager for Oingo Boingo, beginning an affiliation with lead singer Danny Elfman that continues to this day as his agent.

"A career highlight for me this year was co-producing the recently released epic, 16-CD 'Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box' with Warner Bros. Records," she says. Elfman, who worked on a number of upcoming releases including "Men in Black 3," "The Hunger Games" (with T Bone Burnett) and "Dark Shadows," moved into new territory by composing the music for Cirque du Soleil's "Iris."

Minggu, September 11, 2011

The irony of IRIS being staged at the Kodak Theatre hasn’t escaped Elfman. He’s often said that he doesn’t believe he’ll ever win an Oscar, and having his music grace the stage where the annual Oscars ceremony takes place, night after night, is a strange treat. “It’s funny, because I’ve always avoided going to the Kodak,” says Elfman, who now finds that the theater feels like a bit of a second home after going there daily to run the soundboard for the preview performances of IRIS.

“I really don’t like going to awards ceremonies,” Elfman muses. “If you give me a choice between attending the Grammys or the Academy Awards or any of these ceremonies or having a root canal, it would be a tough choice.”

“I’ve always loved the idea of being something of an underdog,” he says. “I was actually a little disappointed when I got my first (Academy Award) nomination. I had like a fantasy of being the most successful composer never to have gotten a nomination.”

Elfman sees awards as something to be avoided, not sought out. “I don’t take awards themselves seriously. Every award I’ve won has gone straight to my mother’s house. I feel like it’s bad luck to even keep them in my house. I have a hardcore policy of never believing in awards.”

All bashing aside, Elfman still has a deep respect for what the Academy does. “It gets people interested in movies, and I support anything that gets people interested in movies. Nobody would ever see a documentary or an animated short…were it not for their awards”

Elfman plans to keep taking more creative side projects, like “IRIS,” in the future, though. “I have to do something every year that’s not film,” he says. “I’m dying to write a suite of chamber music for piano and percussion.”

Kamis, September 08, 2011

And finally, they were ingenuous to bring in a top movie magician – a film composer to do the music score. And they get one of the very best maestros: the great Danny Elfman ("Batman," "Mission: Impossible," "Alice in Wonderland") who created the most cinematic music score in Cirque musical lore.

Bravo, Danny! You should read my memoir "Kiss Me Quick Before I Shoot" that celebrates great composers and the divine marriage of music and film.

The show is presently in previews, the official opening date is Sept. 25. Make sure you experience the magic as soon as you can … because you’ll want to see it again and again and again! Bravo Cirque!

Philippe, why did Cirque want Danny involved in this show? Decouflé: Cirque du Soleil asked me to work on this show and to find a creative team. So my very first idea was let's ask Daniel, because he's one of my favorite composers. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a movie I have seen 50 times. And I had the chance that Danny, he hadn't seen a lot of dance shows in his life, but he saw my solo work in New York a little while before.

Elfman: It was really a bit of fate. I had an agent who was booking concerts. So one night in New York, he says, "We're going to go see a show, a dance show." And I get to the theater and there's just this picture of one person. It's a solo. And I go, "What?! You've taken me to a solo performance? Oh my god, I'm going to see a modern dance solo performance! This is going to be horrible!" And I loved the show. I said, "Whoever this Decouflé is, I'd love to work with him some day." And six months later I get this call saying Cirque is interested. And you also have to remember I started out as a street musician. I was a fire-breather, same as Guy [Cirque Chief Executive Guy Laliberté]. My first performing in my life was with a French musical-theatrical group, Le Grand Magic Circus.

The music for "Iris" incorporates many different styles, from Latin jazz to Balinese gamelan and Japanese taiko drums to serialism.

Elfman: Sometimes I'd get an idea thrown at me, just something to grab hold of. So there was lots of things, like doing Gershwin-esque, or doing Leonard Bernstein, doing something romantic.

Is there anything you haven't been able to do in the Kodak Theatre? Decouflé: I have a model of the Kodak Theatre in my house in Paris, a big one, and I've slept with it for three years. (Laughter.) There is a basic problem in the Kodak: It's the American sickness of king-size. It's too big. It's a reproduction of an Italian theater, but really like king-size. So we had to fight to try to twist the relationship that the spectators have with the space. Because if you respect the normal aperture, it's too big, too far.

Elfman: That's what I noticed right from the beginning. "Iris" is much more human-based. There's a sense of anticipation that's more old-school circus than the new Cirque du Soleil shows. Because I've seen "O" twice, I've seen "Ka" twice. And I never feel that anything could ever go wrong in those shows, they're like clockwork. But here, you have four people, two people, six people, just doing their act, there's no help, there's nothing but them and their bodies. I bite my nails and grit my teeth much more than in any other Cirque show that I've seen. I know they're going to be OK, but I have to look away at moments because it just looks too insanely difficult. To me, of all the Cirque shows I've seen, this one, its unique quality is that connection with the human element. You don't need $100 million of CGI. You're just watching performers performing. And what a joy that is.

“Much like Beetlejuice, nothing seemed to work for temp. I had the pleasure of seeing the movie in a preview without the music and watching the audience be totally confused. After the score was in, the preview got much better because I was able to bring a tone to the film. Nobody quite understood what the film was, and the music going in helped the audience understand what the tone of the film was. They knew that To Die For was a dark film about a murder, but the score let them know it was OK to snicker and laugh a little. They didn’t understand that at first, that it was OK to have fun with the film. So I knew I had to do that right away, starting with the opening titles.”

Wanted

“I don’t think about pop music a lot. I’m busy all the time. If someone asks me to sing something, I’ll be like, ‘OK.’ The producers of Wanted had been struggling to get a song together, and Cathy Nelson from Universal said, ‘Why don’t you take a theme from the movie and turn it into a song?’ So I did, and I laid down a bass line and did one verse and one chorus and sent it out, and I didn’t think about it again. So Wanted is done, and I’m off in London scoring Hellboy with Guillermo Del Toro, and I get a call from Cathy. And she said, ‘Remember ‘The Little Things’? That song you did for Wanted?’ And I said, ‘Uh, no.’ So she sent me an MP3, and [director] Timur [Bekmambetov] decided that’s what he wanted. They needed it in about a week, and I was in the middle of scoring in London. So I wrote another couple of verses and a chorus and did my best to demo it in my hotel, and suddenly we had to go record it. I got a producer named Dave Sardo, and he came in to lay down the tracks, which I wasn’t really able to be there for. But he used my demo as a guide, and I went there in between sessions for Hellboy. We were working around the clock, and I would take a break and go into a side studio to record the vocals.

“And just to torture me more, Timur wanted a Russian version. And I asked him which Russian singer he was going to use, and he insisted that I do it in Russian. So after a double session with the huge Hellboy orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, I met with a Russian coach. But Russian is really hard, especially for an English-speaking person. So we would go over it line by line, and I would sing it back to her in Russian. To my ear it was exactly how it was supposed to sound, but she was constantly laughing, because I kept getting it wrong and couldn’t even hear the difference. By the end of that session, I felt like my brain was spent. There was no more brain. It was gone. I will never think another thought. Trying to sing in Russian murdered me. But it does exist. “The Little Things,” in Russian, sung by me. Those are the sacrifices we make for directors we love.”

Selasa, Juli 12, 2011

Guter: Just this past week I sang the background tracks for the new Cirque du Soleil "Iris" show that will be playing in L.A. Music by Danny Elfman.

Sander: How much time did you have to prepare for that?
Guter: You are given no time to prepare. You show up to the sound stage and sight read the music. It's extremely challenging, exciting and rewarding. You don't really have the liberty of making mistakes when you're on the clock in the studio. Time is money.

Sander: Do you get much direction for your studio vocal performances?
Guter: The composer is almost always there, as well as the vocal contractor. There is also a conductor who assists. They let the choir know what sound, vocal color and emotion they want to convey in the music: darker, sweeter, more vibrato, classical sounding, straight tone, etc.

GCD: Are you a big fan of musical theater?
DE: You know, I'm really not a big fan of musical theater onstage, but the things I love, I really love. My tastes run close to Tim's: my favorite musical would probably be Sweeney Todd, so I was incredibly happy when Tim was doing that. I'm not a fan of contemporary musicals per se. I love classics: West Side Story, old Rodgers and Hammerstein. In the last 30 years, I've liked bits and pieces here and there but I'm not a fan of pop musicals. When Broadway went with pop in general as a motif, it kinda lost me a bit. But I haven't given up on it. I still want to do something interesting and strange that I could get my teeth into. It's just a matter of getting the right project.

GCD: So there is a possibility we could see a live stage musical from you some day?
DE: Oh yeah. A Broadway-style production? Absolutely. I have worked on a few already. I've dabbled.

Following the success of The Goldsmith Project, AYS explores the work of famed film composer and popular musician Danny Elfman. Selections from Elfman's scores for Tim Burton's Batman and Edward Scissorhands, among other movies, will be performed alongside classical masterpieces. This is a great opportunity to hear Elfman's scores be performed live in the concert hall! The afternoon symposium will feature a live performance and discussion of his innovative work and collaborations.

LIONSGATE today announced an unprecedented film music collaboration between Academy Award® winner and two time nominee T Bone Burnett (CRAZY HEART, COLD MOUNTAIN) and four time Academy Award® nominated composer Danny Elfman (ALICE IN WONDERLAND, SPIDER-MAN) on the music for the highly anticipated film adaptation of THE HUNGER GAMES, based on the first in Suzanne Collins's runaway bestselling book trilogy.

Elfman and Burnett will be collaborating on the film score, with Burnett also serving as the film's Executive Music Producer, producing songs for the film and soundtrack.

Said Lionsgate's Head of Film Music Tracy McKnight of the musical dream team assembled on behalf of the film, "THE HUNGER GAMES is such a special property – it has worldwide mass appeal, but it's also sophisticated, cerebral, soulful, and rebellious. We needed a composer who can translate these qualities musically, and we have not one but two incredible artists in an absolutely thrilling first time ever collaboration."

...composers have been full of bullshit since day one. Ever since Bernard Herrmann said, to answer the question, “Why did you write the Psycho score for strings?” “Because it was black and white,” and people still say that now. Of course that was bullshit. Citizen Kanewas black and white. That doesn’t mean anything. It’s just something that popped into his head. So that is part of the job. None of us know how what we make work works, and I think any of us that are any good, in particular, don’t know what we’re doing really, or how it works.

...for ten years I went between the band and scoring, and it was a love/hate thing, but it kept the balance. And then for the next ten years, I didn’t, and I found myself really losing it. I had to find something else, so I started writing scripts, and I wrote three scripts and sold them, but I never really stuck with it. But I had to do something else, and then I realized I’ll take this commission. And when I did that, I realized I need to do something every year that’s not for film. I haven’t been totally true to that, but I’m trying, and I know exactly the piece I wanted to write this year. I want to start doing chamber music now; the ballet was a great experience. And these things are great pressure valve releases because I can’t do just film music or I’ll go nuts.

...as it turns out, I have five films booked, which is the most I’ve ever had in the future, which is weird. I’ve never been able to see more than two or three ahead, and I don’t like, actually, having my future all booked up. So it’s a very weird thing because it’s like, “Oh, I see. Fourteen months of my life is already totally spoken for,” and it’s scary, but it just happened. It’s a two-Tim Burton year, and a Sam Raimi, so there’s three. I’m not going to say no to Tim and Sam -- that’s already three movies. And then Men in Black, well of course I don’t want somebody else to do number 3, so there was another one. And then another one called The Hunger Games popped up, which seemed like really interesting thing.

"It was all completely evolutionary as it came together," Elfman told Billboard.biz at the Kodak Theatre, where the show "Iris" opens in previews July 21. "In a weird way it was nothing like working on a film. It was closer to working with Twyla Tharp on the ballet."

Elements of the score heard Thursday in the rooftop scene were clearly inspired by film noir classics, Alfred Newman and "West Side Story," which Elfman acknowledged. Otherwise, he says, the music was designed to complement the ideas of writer-director Philippe Decouflé.

"There are two characters, so there are throughlines for them. Does it make logical sense like a script? Absolutely not. This is a surrealistic homage. You get a sense of characters moving through the story, but the story is very much a dream."

The media got its first glimpse this morning of Iris, the new permanent Cirque du Soleil show set for previews at the Kodak Theatre in July and an official opening September 25th.

FishbowlLA has seen a few Cirque shows, and we can honestly say that there’s something extra special going on here, thanks to the subject matter of cinema, the heart-of-Hollywood show location, and the fact that the music is provided by none other than Tim Burton right-hand band Danny Elfman. The composer’s sensibilities are as perfect a match for a Cirque moviola as they are for the filmmaker’s phantasmagorical canvases.

Rabu, Juni 15, 2011

Oh, yeah, there are a lot. Right now, his talent makes me miserable because he is so good and even more prolific than me but I can't dislike him because A, he is a good guy and B, he is a great composer, and that is Alexandre Desplat. I think he is the motherf**ker on the street that has to be reckoned with for other composers right now in my mind. Not the most successful, but that doesn't define who the best is.

Each one of Tim’s films would open another door. Pee Wee opened a big door. After Beetlejuice, then, “Oh, he can do fantasy. Okay. Crazy fantasy.” After Batman, it’s like, “Oh, we can give him big films and darker films.” And afterEdward Scissorhands, it was like, “Oh, well he can do romantic.” So all the early Tim films, each one of them marked, equally, another door, because then I was trying to work in every genre. So I was really aggressively trying to always get out of every niche that I was in. I wanted to do romantic, I wanted to do ridiculous, I wanted to do dark… Bernard Hermann was able to do everything, and I wanted model myself after him. And Jerry Goldmsith can do everything, every genre. So, to me, these were the guys who I felt like, even if I could never approach their level of talent and musicianship, I wanted to try to go, if I could, for the level of versatility I found that they were showing.

Selasa, Juni 14, 2011

DE: Yeah, and I realized, when I was transcribing the Duke Ellington, I could hear anything I needed to hear. I could play a little bit of the record, stop it, freeze it, and get all the piano parts that he played. I could get it all down exactly. And I also learned, in those years, that I was able to hear parts that the musicians, who were all better than me, couldn’t hear, and I thought that was odd. He’d play a wrong harmonic conversion in a chord, and I said, “No, no, it’s like that, like I wrote it.” And he goes, “Oh, are you sure? I hear it the other way.” And I’d listen to it and go, “No, it’s definitely that.” And then he’d go, “Oh, okay.” So I learned to trust my ear, basically, in those years.

Elfman — who said that the night "really was memory lane" — confirmed that Frankenweenie, which is due for an October 2012 release, is "more than halfway through" production. He'll be scoring the film but has yet to start. "I really don't start until they are in a rough cut. Tim usually cheats it a little bit. He usually brings me in about the middle somewhere and often I will come up with some ideas then. I do read the scripts and get ideas, but none of those ideas have ever survived. When I look at one of his movies, I blank out my mind from anything I thought from the script."

Sabtu, Mei 28, 2011

Decouflé chose American composer Danny Elfman. “Two or three (film) composers are like God for me,” Decouflé said. “But only one of them, Elfman, is alive. The Nightmare Before Christmas (by Tim Burton) is one of my favourite movies.”

The Burton exhibition, originally organized by New York's MoMA in New York, will continue on to the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris after the L.A. run ends on Halloween.

Danny Elfman, a frequent Burton collaborator on pics including "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas," composed music specifically for the exhibit to help enhance the "Burtonesque" environment.

DE: Oh, yeah, there are a lot. Right now, his talent makes me miserable because he is even more prolific than me but I can't dislike him because A, he is a great guy and B, he is a great composer, and that is Alexandre Desplat. I think he is the motherf**ker on the street that has to be reckoned with for other composers right now in my mind. Not the most successful, but that doesn't define who the best is.

Sabtu, Mei 21, 2011

As a four-time Oscar nominated and GRAMMY®-award winning composer, Danny Elfman is the mastermind behind some of the world's most memorable movie scores including Spider-Man, Milk, Midnight Run and Mission: Impossible as well as such TV themes as The Simpsons and Desperate Housewives. His work with Tim Burton on films like Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Big Fish and Beetlejuice are among his most acclaimed. Elfman and Burton's instant film chemistry led them to a 25-year, 13-film collaboration when Elfman was pulled from his band Oingo Boingo to scorePee-Wee's Big Adventure in 1985. The magic formula most recently struck gold again with the release of the blockbuster Alice in Wonderland.

Join us in The Clive Davis Theater for a rare discussion and audience Q & A with the renowned composer. Moderated by GRAMMY Foundation Vice President Scott Goldman, Elfman will be discussing the release of the new box set:The Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box.

The best word to describe Restless truly is "quaint" - strange, peculiar, or unusual in a pleasing or amusing way. It can sometimes be a bit depressing, but Danny Elfman's score and Mia Wasikowska's unending charm brings some lightness to the otherwise heavy plot. I enjoyed it and found myself entertained and invested in the characters, at least the two leads. The performances aren't flawless and were a bit too reserved at times, but that didn't detract too much from the film and story overall. It may not have a lot of style, but it's the wonderful story at its heart that makes it such a great film. Van Sant seems to continue growing on me with every new film, and this is one that I know I won't soon be forgetting. Worth watching if you get the chance. Baca lengkapnya di sini. Kebanyakan mencela tapi, rating di Rotten Tomatoes sampai saat ini adalah 33% (rotten).

Cirque du Soleil invites you to experience IRIS, a Journey Through the World of Cinema. This large-scale production - created exclusively for its permanent home at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles - offers a new take on the art of cinema as only Cirque du Soleil could imagine it. IRIS is an inventive spectacle that combines dance, acrobatics, projections, filmed sequences, animation and original music that will take audiences on a mesmerizing journey that blurs the lines between reality and illusion.

IRIS explores the different techniques of cinema, as it evolves from black and white to colour in a world of shadows and light. The story unfolds as our two young heroes venture through a universe that brings to life a succession of cinematic genres, reawakening the limitless potential of this art form. Join acclaimed choreographer/director Philippe Decouflé and Oscar-nominated composer Danny Elfman on this fantastic voyage, breathtakingly unfurled with 72 performers, 200 costumes, 8,300 square feet of performance floor, 174 loudspeakers, 603 lighting features, 20 video projectors and 160,000 watts of sound.

The movie’s voice talent includes Winona Ryder, Martin Landau, Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara. John August (Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride) is writing the screenplay. The project is the 14th collaboration between the composer and the director. The stop-motion animation film will be shot in black and white and rendered in 3D. While Elfman’s involvement was expected given his relationship with Burton, it has been confirmed by Elfman’s agency that the composer has officially joined the project. Frankenweenie is set for a release in digital 3D on October 5, 2012 by Walt Disney Pictures.

Elfman also has the sci-fi action Real Steel coming out this year. The movie directed by Shawn Levy is set in the near-future where 2,000-pound robots that look like humans do battle and stars Hugh Jackman, Kevin Durand, Evangeline Lilly, Anthony Mackie and Hope Davis. The Dreamworks production will be relased by Touchstone Pictures on October 7, 2011. Also coming up for Elfman is Gus van Sant’s Restless and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men In Black III starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin for a summer 2012 release.